LOL! Transponder!
I dont think i have ever herd of a laptop having one of those. Sounds like hes really good at scare tactics.
There is very little way they could tell if a file has been copied!
Ohh well, should have stolen the laptop.

This an old story. The video was uploaded on September 11, 2006.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=22762

Thats it? I thought they were going to reveal that person to the whole class or something?

I think it's a smokescreen. Why would he announce it in class? Why not just quietly grab the guy as soon as they knew where he was on campus?

You would think they would want to keep the matter as quiet as possible...I mean, this thief has TRADE SECRETS and everything! The compitition might be listening! (Why would someone leave a laptop with ultra super secrets unguarded?)

Oh...and in 15 minutes he got a call from Washington asking why he had the versions of Windows on 2 computers? pffft. He must have connections to get service like that.

Nope, misleading title - student actually *didn't* get owned, per dotdude's link.

AHA! I didn't go to the link because I thought it was to the original video. That's pretty funny...he might have done better by saying, "We saw you and we don't want your career to be over, so redeem yourself...the test is worthless anyway."

Silly Prof.

Title changed. Better?

There's a vague possibility that this could all be true. If this professor was working on something very important, there's a possibility he could have obtained a "special" laptop with "special" equipment" with a "special" version of windows with a "special" serial number.

I don't know what kind of -trade secrets- are on there, but chances are the casual thief wouldn't know what to do with it even if he/she found it. But if it's anything like engineering notes or specs on a defense project of some kind, then I could see how stealing it could have some very serious consequences even if that wasn't the thief's intent.

But, yeah it seems more like to plant the fear of God into whoever stole the computer.

lol, dotdude, I voted for it even w/ the old misleading title. <grin>

Wumpus: the article linked says the same thing you did - thing is, this guy's just an overdramatic biology professor, not someone with real "power".

In unrelated news, I wrote an exam today which had a question about idiot professors ripping off their students' scholarship funds. Good times!

Now that I actually read the article, I'm a little surprised at myself.

But I think that Daphne had it pegged about the 2 Windows installs.

he's so full of @#$@#

lol

nice try Mr Professor

Not to mention it has a Rockwell Encabulator which right now is syncing every gram meter in the vicinity.

Yeah, this is old. Would be interesting to know if it was recovered though. Transponder? Never heard of LoJack for laptops but they could perhaps triangulate a wifi signal if they could pick it out. The thief would have to be dumb to use the machine in the local area though.

Yeah, when this first came out everyone was kind of impressed that the thief was going to get owned or something...until we actually heard what the professor was saying and people started picking apart his speech and generally concluded that he was full of shit.

sucks pretty hard for him; awkward way to try to get the culprit though.

a friend recently had his stolen from his house by some crackhead, and its terrible to think that some asshole has so much of your personal data that they can do whatever they want with.

backup your laptops everybody, and keep them in a secure place.

Bloody amateurs. I'd steal the laptop just for that information and then sell it to commercial competitors.

@duckfat In fact they do have LoJack for laptops and it does go by that catchy title.

However, it is just software (some companies have tried embedding it in firmware).

Even though he made all this up, it doesn't change the fact that people still leave incredibly sensitive data on laptops. Laptops! I still don't understand the idiocy. Keep all of your vital data on a nice, big, password-protected minitower in a locked office. I work at the IT department for my university and you would be astounded with the sheer volume of incredibly personal data (e.g., social security numbers) freely available on all sorts of network drives and laptops.

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